LONDON – Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp denied tax evasion to police by insisting he “couldn’t even fill a teamsheet in.”
A tape recording of the interview was played at Redknapp’s court trial where he is accused of hiding $295,000 of transfer bonuses in an offshore account.
Redknapp told officers he had not seen his pay slip in years, saying: “You talk to anybody at the football club. I don’t write. I couldn’t even fill a team sheet in.”
Redknapp, who along with co-defendant Milan Mandaric denies tax evasion charges relating to their time at Portsmouth, described himself as “utterly disorganized.”
“I am not going to fiddle taxes, I pay my accountant a fortune to look after me,” Redknapp said in the June 2009 police interview.
“He writes all the checks for me and my wife,” the 64-year-old manager added. “He pays my bills. He runs my life basically.”
Redknapp’s bank adviser, Alan Hills, recalled in court on Thursday how Redknapp made “disastrous” business decisions and lost 250,000 ($392,000) pounds trying to invest in Oxford United at a undisclosed time.
Redknapp’s attorney John Kelsey-Fry used the example to deny prosecution claims that Redknapp was a “hardheaded businessman”.
Mandaric is accused of paying $145,000 into Redknapp’s Monaco bank account in May 2002 — a bonus prompted by Peter Crouch’s sale from Portsmouth to Aston Villa — and another $150,000 two years later.
The prosecution case is that the Redknapp and Mandaric, who is now chairman at third-tier club Sheffield Wednesday, were trying to dodge paying income tax and national insurance.
Redknapp managed Portsmouth, which is now in the second tier, between 2002 and 2004, and returned to Fratton Park in 2005 after a brief spell at its archrival Southampton before moving to Tottenham in 2008.
